“Fashion Is My Sport of Choice”: Christina Ricci Returns to the Met Gala in Fendi

“Fashion is my favorite sport” Christina Ricc told vanity fair the weekend before the first Monday in May, the annual date of the Met Gala, which benefits the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.

It’s obvious that Ricci really likes Mode. You don’t have such a unique, enduring style throughout your long and public career without a natural love for the stuff — which is why it’s an especially huge boon for The Met and The Met’s fans that she’s back at the gala after a row for decades Break.

The actor collaborated Kim Jones, Fendi’s Artistic Director to create this year’s look. Jones and Ricci are old friends, which can help streamline the process of getting dressed for fashion’s biggest night of the year. (And the stakes are high: This event involves climbing stairs. As Ricci jokes, “I think it’s mean that they let you do the red carpet on the stairs. It’s like they’re just waiting for someone to fall.” “). After Fendi sent some options, Ricci strongly favored the two-piece shimmering silver option in trompe l’oeil lurex fabric with jacquard embroidery. Jones gave his full support.

“It’s nice because they’re your girlfriend,” she said, describing the shorthand she has with the designer. “They take care of you. It’s more than some kind of capitalist endgame.”

This year’s Met Gala exhibition theme focuses on a single designer with a major presence: “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty.” Fendi was one of the many fashion houses Lagerfeld managed during his lifetime, and his final line for the brand, Fall 2019, was shown posthumously. Jones was appointed as his successor soon after. It’s good to have friends in Italian places, as the saying goes.

Ricci was at Milan Fashion Week this year and was able to stop by the city’s atelier for a healthy mix of intimidation and glamour. “They took me back to their showroom and I was oohing and ahhing about stuff, and then Kim handed it to me and I was like, yeah! Gifts! And then it’s just beautiful and also intimidating. You dress up and they pin it up and take pictures and then you choose accessories and all that stuff.”

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For Ricci, collaborating on the dress is a big part of enjoying the event. “One of the Met Galas I’ve attended before had a superhero theme [“Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy”], so I had a very clear idea of ​​what I wanted done. And in this case I was supposed to go with a designer and I presented my idea and they ignored it. So I went to Riccardo Tisci, who I knew, and it was when he first went to Givenchy, and he loved the idea,” she said. He ended up making the red bodysuit bustier with a sheer pink fabric wrapped around it for the 2008 gala.

Between the fittings in Milan and the Met’s stairs in New York, everything is a far cry from the mousy and murderous character Ricci plays yellow jackets, Showtime’s hugely popular teen cannibal thriller. Ricci recently told my colleague David Canfield that she noticed that people treated her a little differently when she put on her Misty wig and shabby Misty clothes; You were a little too casual. Fortunately, the opposite can also be the case.

“When I dress up for red carpets or the press, I try to dress as intimidatingly as possible because I’m small and generally traumatized by the world,” Ricci said dryly. “If [stylists or designers] are like: What do you want your look to say? I’m like, I want my look to say stay away from me. I want to look as intimidating as possible. That’s really what I’m aiming for and it’s working.”

If fashion is Ricci’s sport, the specific sport must be tournament. Her attire can function as armor, and her Jones-designed silver skirt and top elegantly match her brief. Lagerfeld would almost certainly approve of the approach, and indeed the designer Ricci herself agreed. “I met him once and he called me ‘très Mignon’ which means ‘very cute’ in French. It basically made my life.”

The man had high standards that he could articulate clearly, so he wasn’t subservient. “For example, it is Karl Lagerfeld. If he says I’m cute, then I’m cute.”